Ann Griffin-Bernstorff was born and raised in Limerick, Ireland. Bernstorff was trained in France as a horticulturist. In 1963 she won the Taylor Art Scholarship to study at the Atelier Yves Brayer and Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Later she returned to Dublin where she trained and worked as a picture restorer for the next five years. Ann's influences are diverse. She admires Botticelli, the Italian primitives, early Flemish painters and the Limbourg Brothers. Her paintings of children owe something to the work of 18th and 19th century American itinerant painters, with their portraits of plump, pale figures with large, flat faces, who peer out of elaborate miniaturized adult clothes. Currently Griffin-Bernstorff is the historian and Artist creating the cartoons for a major tapestry to commemorate Ireland's Norman heritage.